On working days, the Brians 2 prison, in Sant Esteve de Sesrovires, maintains the calm of any prison. The real bustle is on the weekend, when most of the inmates receive visits from friends and family. On Monday, the great lobby of the main entrance remains silent, broken only by the motors of the coffee, drinks, sweets and sweets machines that serve as a lifeless bar. While the chronicler waits in a chair for the prison official to finish completing the documentation for her meeting with the prisoner Dani Alves, a man bursts in with a backpack on his back. “I have come to enter voluntarily,” he says aloud. “Very well. Sit there for a moment and wait for me to finish this.”
Alves speaks Spanish well, but from time to time he sneaks in a word or expression in Brazilian. In person, and behind the screen, he is much smaller than he appeared on the soccer field. His appearance, far from the bizarre and hard image of recent times, appears friendly. He doesn’t stop moving his free arm, the one that doesn’t hold the call room phone, to gesticulate all the time; and he opens and closes his almost transparent blue-green eyes.
We return at dawn on December 31. “I have a very clear conscience about what happened that morning in the bathroom of the Sutton discotheque. What happened and what did not happen. And what did not happen is that I forced that woman to do anything we did “.
– Did he repeatedly ask you to stop, to leave him, that he wanted to go out?
-No. We hardly talk.
-Who proposes to go to the bathroom?
-I. I do it because I know that bathroom is there. We had been dancing very close for a while. We didn’t kiss or anything. But it was evident from the movements and the looks that there was an attraction.
-In the images of the security cameras of the room they are seen talking.
-Yes, but nonsense at night. Nothing important. But there is a moment when we are getting very close. We are in a public place and although my friend Bruno stands in front of us all the time to avoid taking photos of us, I suggest that he go to the bathroom. I tell her I’ll go in first and wait for her.
Why didn’t they go upstairs? There is a sofa next to a table, if they wanted to have sex, it was a more comfortable place.
-Upstairs is a space without privacy, everything is open and I am married. What he was doing he couldn’t do. I went into the bathroom first and after a while I thought that she would have changed her mind and that she would not go in anymore. It was taking a long time. She was already walking out the door when I saw her approach. I stepped to the side, she walked past me and then went into the bathroom. I went in after her. I didn’t even lock the door. He knew that Bruno was outside waiting for no one to enter. My friend knew what we were doing.
-The woman assures that he did not let her leave. That he threw her to the ground. That he hit her. That he insulted her. At the Clínic hospital they found a scratch on her knee.
– None of this is true. But there she with her conscience. She never told me to stop. Neither she nor she made any gesture of wanting to leave. The door was open at all times, he could have left because I was sitting practically the whole time on the toilet seat.
“And the woman’s fingerprints on the mirror and sink?”
I don’t know when he touched those places. But none of those movements that she has said that I forced her to do are true and the scratch is from remaining on her knees while she performed fellatio on me. There is not a single mark on her body that explains the violence with which she says that I moved her in the bathroom.
-Did you drink a lot that night?
-I? No. We had a bottle of champagne, but when they [the complainant and her two companions] approached our table I had been drinking water for a while.
-Did you insist that they come to your table?
– It’s not true either. We arrived at the Sutton, to the table that was frequently assigned to us and, as always, the person in charge of the VIP approached us to ask us if we wanted to meet a girl. That always happened when I wasn’t with my wife. I told them yes and two girls approached first. But it bothered us that they wanted to take photos. We asked them to leave. At that moment the three young women passed by our table and looked at us. We also them. They were with some Mexicans, who recognized me. They wouldn’t stop looking at us. We asked the waiter to ask if they wanted to come over. And they came. We had champagne and offered to order whatever they wanted. The lady with whom I had the problem began to dance very close to me. I did not turn away.
-When she comes out of the bathroom, she breaks down and cries. Why, if as you say, what happened was consented to?
Well, no matter how many times I think about it, I don’t know either. It occurs to me that there is someone who gave you bad advice. That he felt bad after doing it, that he took a step forward and that he has no longer known how to get out of the mess he has gotten himself into and the one he has gotten me into. I appeal to his conscience. There has not been a single night that I have not slept peacefully. Not a single night. I have a clear conscience. I have never willfully hurt anyone. And neither did she that night. I don’t know if she has a clear conscience, if she sleeps well at night. I forgive her, I still don’t know why she did all this, but I forgive her.
-In a few hours you offered three versions in court and an earlier one in a video, assuring that you had never seen that woman in your life. He lied a lot.
-If someone has ever truly loved, if they have known, like me, true love, they will know that to preserve that love, one does anything. And I lied. I was afraid of losing Joana and that’s why I lied. I fought desperately to save my marriage from infidelity, regardless of the consequences I’m paying.
Didn’t your lawyer advise you before declaring?
-He had been waiting for hours in a dungeon. He didn’t know where she was going, or what would happen to me. But that was not the important thing.
– But he lied.
-Yes, but as soon as I was able to tell my wife what had really happened that night and I asked her for forgiveness, I wanted to testify again and tell the truth. I am clear that all this that I am living is a nightmare. Which I hope someday will end.
That statement that Alves refers to in the interview was made at his own request and was accompanied by a new request for release that was rejected, with a subsequent appeal before the Barcelona Court, likewise rejected. The athlete knows that he will come to trial from prison, exhausted the options to request provisional release again, given the high risk of escape that the various magistrates who have assessed the case over the last five months have warned.
